


Long nights of getting lost

by lesbianjackrackham



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Episode Related, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Past Suicidal Thoughts, everyone in si-5 is fucked up about sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-24 22:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16184099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianjackrackham/pseuds/lesbianjackrackham
Summary: Jacobi: Oh, Jesus. Did you–? Did you vet me? Before you recruited me?Kepler: What? You think we just happened to bump into each other? Please. I knew everything about you.---No Complaints coda





	Long nights of getting lost

They clean up the cardboard shells from the fireworks and then, giggling, drive away from the approaching police sirens. A minute or so later, with powder and flame still clinging to his skin, Jacobi asks, “So how long did you scout me for?”

Kepler taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Not long. Maybe a few days.”

“Why not longer?”

“I already had what I needed to know.”

“Which was?” Kepler spares a glance at him, and the sparkle in his eye is visible even in the dark.

“Lots of fishing tonight.” He slows the car at a stop sign and then pulls ahead. “I knew the facts, which you helpfully reiterated to me in the bar. But watching you…” Kepler hums. “You had, let’s call it, a misplaced energy. I saw that you were ready to get to work.”

Jacobi says, “You watched me?”

“I did.”

“Where did you watch me?”

Kepler says, “Mr. Jacobi,” and Daniel licks his lips. He licks his lips and they still taste like ash, bitter, and dry, and gritty under his tongue.

He remembers that week in San Francisco, passing through town and spending his savings on alcohol and drugs, spending the night with whomever for a free place to crash so he could stretch the last paycheck and let the party go on a little longer. Two years since the Air Force booted him, then a year of interviewing and _hoping_ and then another year of ignoring his mother’s calls and his sister’s texts. Of fucking around and fucking across the country and watching the numbers in his bank account steadily drop.

As wasted as he was, he remembers that afternoon with perfect clarity, Kepler’s careful sidle up to the bar, up into his space with an intimacy that bypassed strangers but held the line for anything more suggestive.

Jacobi was out of money, having handed the bartender his last stack of bills and instructing him to keep pouring until the money ran out. After that, he had a couple of options. One of them involving that nice orange bridge over the ocean.

Instead, he called the number on a business card.

Kepler says his name again, three syllables, rough and slow, and Jacobi says, “What did you see?” They’re back in the motel parking lot, car idling a low rumble echoing the vibration under his skin, this itch, this misplaced energy, as Kepler so deftly put it.

The thing is, knowing what he knows now about Goddard Futuristics, they must have known about him about him earlier than those last few days of binging. And even if they’d sat on his file for a year, year and a half, waiting for him to, what. Wear himself out? It was Kepler who watched him, Kepler who saw him stumbling around the city, lost and manic and darting in and out of traffic for the hell of it, and Kepler who waited for the last possible moment to offer a different way out.

To replace one anniversary with another.

Kepler turns off the car and steps out and Jacobi follows, just a half step behind. They leave their shit from the fake stakeout in the car, which isn’t mission regulation, but then again, neither were the fireworks. Inside the room the two double beds are as they left them, covered in gear and half unpacked suitcases. He’s stuck suddenly by the intimacy of it, their things overlapping on top of the covers. Behind him, Kepler closes the door to the room.

“Not exactly the note I intended this night to end on,” Kepler says mildly.

“Oh?” Jacobi manages; his mouth is dry.

“And I’ve seem to run out of fireworks,” he muses.

“Sir—”

“Jacobi, I’m only going to say this once, so listen the hell up. You’re better off here than at the bottom of the fucking ocean. You do good work, and sometimes you do exemplary work. I’ve had to go to _war_ with Young to keep you doing fieldwork and not stuck in a backroom doing R &D all day, but if you want I’ll fill out the damn paperwork tonight and you’ll be back to making explosives full-time by tomorrow morning. But I think you’re happier here. Was the recruitment process a little eccentric? Maybe. But no more than anything else you’ve done since you started here. And certainly no more than I’ve done.”

Kepler pauses to breathe, and in that second Jacobi sees it: a little crack in the armor known as Warren Kepler, a twinge of worry in the crease in his forehead. And if Jacobi wasn’t in love with him before, well.

“Sir—”

“I’m not done.” Kepler opens his mouth again, and then presses his lips together in thought. “Would it help to say we wouldn’t have let it get that far?”

“We?”

“Me. I wouldn’t have let it get that far.”

“Really. What would you have—”

“There were a number of safeguards in place in case you didn’t call. And if all else failed, I would have dragged you off that damn bridge myself.”

“Huh,” Jacobi blinks. He licks his lips again. Somehow he’s more on edge than before, nerves lit up with adrenaline, energy building to the limit of his ability to contain it. “Well... Thanks. Sir.”

“Great,” says Kepler. He sits down at the edge of his bed and starts to unlace his shoes. “Do you want first shower?”

“Major.”

“Call it part two of the anniversary… whatever.”

“Kepler,” Jacobi says, and before he knows it, he’s made his way across the room to stand just in the triangle of Kepler’s legs. This is dangerous, for so many reasons.

This is a different kind of bridge.

Before Kepler can move, or say anything else, Jacobi lets himself go to his knees in front of him. He reaches forward, and Kepler catches his hand.

“Jacobi,” he says. “Daniel.” His voice is firm and cautious, but he’s not shoving Jacobi away, just holding his hand steady, as if Jacobi might sway forward at any second. Jacobi’s other hand is free and he snakes it around Kepler’s ankle, just as something to hold onto.

“Sir,” Jacobi says.

“This wasn’t,” he sighs. “Jacobi.”

“I know. I know, sir, but. Please.”

He doesn’t dare look up, just holds onto the warmth of contact as Kepler lets out the smallest shudder, a microscopic movement. He tips Jacobi’s chin up with his other hand, strokes his fingers against Jacobi’s ear as he traces his thumb across Jacobi's cheek.

Kepler’s face is— Jesus, a cross of emotions that nearly sends Jacobi reeling, flashes of concentrated thought that betray a puzzle of analyses, calculating and cold masking hesitation and fear and—

“Alright,” Kepler says, almost kindly, and releases Jacobi’s hand.


End file.
